Virtualization plays an important in today’s modern IT environment. Whether it is testing, deploying on multiple platforms, or accessing multiple operating systems it is the power of virtual environments. For creating virtual machines on a system there are various options and they have their pros and cons as well. We are discussing VMware Workstation and Oracle VirtualBox.
1. VMware: VMware is a desktop virtualization software platform that is developed by VMware. It is hypervisor software that is placed on a physical server that allows us to run multiple operating systems on a single server. All the resources used by the physical server are used by all servers.
Some features of VMware:
- It offers products comprising virtualization, software storage, and networking tools.
- Various security options and multiple operating system support.
- It uses the host’s resources to run the functioning of the operating system installed in a virtual environment.
- For proper functioning, it uses resources in the assigned manner.
2. VirtualBox: VirtualBox is software that is provided by Oracle to install virtual machines onto your system. It was introduced in the year 2007 by Innotek Gmbh and later was developed by Oracle. It is also called a software virtualization package that is capable to load multiple operating systems.
Some features of VirtualBox:
- It offers a variety of operating systems such as Windows XP, Linux, Ubuntu, and macOS.
- It is a very rich, robust, and extremely high-performance product offered for home and enterprise uses.
- It is used by professionals in the form of Open Source Software.
- It is open-source software that provides virtualization and is capable to offer services on almost every type of host operating system.
Differences between VMware and VirtualBox:
| S.No. | VMware | VirtualBox |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | VMware is virtualization software that helps you to run multiple operating systems in a single host. | VirtualBox is an Oracle tool to provide host-based virtualization. |
| 2. | It is used for enterprise and home purposes. | It is used for educational and private purposes. |
| 3. | Offers virtualization at the hardware level. | Offers virtualization at both hardware and software levels. |
| 4. | The proprietary license can be availed for $79.99. | The proprietary license can be availed for $79.99. |
| 5. | It can run on Linux, Windows, and macOS. | It can run on Linux, Windows, Solaris, and macOS. |
| 6. | It is not an open-source tool. | It is an open-source tool. |
| 7. | It offers limited Virtual Machine encryption. | It offers Virtual Machine encryption with the extension pack. |
| 8. | It supports VMDK disk format. | It supports VDI, VHD, VMDK and HDD disk formats |
| 9. | It does not offer any shared storage support. | It offers shared storage support with NFS, CIFS, and iSCSI. |
| 10. | VMware offers ease of access to the users. | VirtualBox does not allow ease of access as compared to VMware. |
| 11. | It provides a complicated user interface. | It provides a user-friendly interface. |
| 12. | Out-of-the-box USB device support is provided. | For the functionality of USB 2.0/3.0, Extension Pack is required. |
| 13. | Video memory is limited to 2 GB. | Video memory is limited to 128 MB. |
| 14. | 3D acceleration is default enabled. | 3D acceleration needs to be manually enabled. |
| 15. | It is a type 1 Hypervisor. | It is a type 2 Hypervisor. |